Mercury Retrograde and the Market: I Checked So You Don't Have To
If you spend any time in the corners of the internet where markets meet the mystical, you've heard it: Mercury retrograde is when everything goes sideways. Miscommunication, reversals, bad trades, chaos. Some traders genuinely lighten up during retrograde.
I like these questions. I also insist on checking them. So I tagged every trading day the Micro Nasdaq has seen and marked which ones fell during a Mercury retrograde — computed from actual planetary positions, not a horoscope app — then compared the retrograde days to everything else.
Here's the result.
Retrograde days look exactly like normal days
Against a baseline of 247.0 points ($494):
| Sample | Median range | vs. baseline | Chop | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mercury retrograde | 307 days | 252.8 / $506 | +2% | 59% |
| Mercury direct | 1,308 days | 245.9 / $492 | +0% | 57% |
That's it. That's the whole story. Retrograde days ran about 2% wider than normal — which, across 307 days, is statistical rounding error. The chop rate is basically identical. The trend-up and trend-down splits are within a point of each other.
Mercury retrograde does not show up in the Nasdaq. Whatever it's doing to your group chats, it isn't touching the tape.
Why I bothered
Same reason as always. I'm genuinely curious about the cyclical, the celestial, the "what if timing leaves a fingerprint" questions. I don't roll my eyes at them — I test them. That's the difference between being closed-minded and being rigorous.
And the honest result here is a shrug. 307 retrograde days, no measurable effect. If anything, it's a useful thing to know: if you've been trading smaller or skittish during retrograde because it feels dangerous, the data says the danger is in your head, not the chart. That's worth something — sometimes the myth-bust frees you up.
This is the twin of the full-moon study: a beloved cosmic explanation that simply doesn't survive the count. Which is fine. Not everything mystical has to move markets for it to be worth checking. The checking is the point.
Trade the tape, not the trickster.
— 23HT
How this was done: ~1,615 daily MNQ bars from the 2019 launch through September 2025, each flagged for Mercury retrograde from computed planetary longitude, then compared by median range and day-type against direct-motion days.